REVIEW

The Children's Hour

The Jaundiced Eye stares down a case of two men falsely accused of child molestation.

By DENNIS HARVEY

JUST THE OTHER week one speaker at a high-profile GOP breakfast enclave delivered the sage insight that powerful civilizations have all fallen due to the same two causes: child sacrifice and condoning homosexuality. Uh, what? Apparently hate won't go away until pried from every cold, dead finger left clutching it.

But of course U.S. homophobia pivots like a weather vane, pointing in as many directions as our cultural winds blow. Right now there's a tornado out there, born from an unnatural confluence of two elements: gays and kids.

Even before Anita Bryant hit the publicity jackpot with her mid-'70s "I don't hate homosexuals ... I just don't want them recruiting our children!" crusade, the dark unfathomable mysteries of same-sex love have been assumed to encompass the Worst Thing Imaginable, i.e., pedophilia. Yes, Virginia, there are gay molesters. But shove 'em all in a police lineup, straight and gay, and - as case studies have shown over and over - you'll find the queers number even fewer than Dr. Kinsey's traditional 1-in-10 gender-pref ratio.

"Stupid facts" never stopped a zealot in his or her tracks, however. So imperiled youth remain at the heart of anti-gay propagandizing. This unfair fight escalates every day. In one corner, we have increasing media/activist pressure on the conscience: the appalled reaction to Matthew Shephard's death, the Brandon Teena movies, last week's Frontline special "Assault on Gay America." In the bad-news corner, there's our era's out-of-control hysteria over child abuse, a legal system that's become a de facto raw materials feed for our fastest growing industry (prisons), and entrenched homophobia that only gets more virulent as gay rights gain popular support.

Sitting pretty in our civic bubble of relative tolerance, we need occasional pinpricks like The Jaundiced Eye to remind that it can happen here. Nonny de la Peña's new documentary tracks a case so lopsided you get the bends just watching: in semirural Monroe, Mich., Stephen Matthews fathered a child by his high school girlfriend - then realized he was gay, and took off for California. The bitter jiltee used his parents as baby-sitters until she and a new boyfriend took exception to the child's "spoiling" by grandma and gramps. Apparently five-year-old Junior was coming home and behaving intolerably - how dare he think he had channel-changing rights! Young mom and husband-to-be promptly reasoned the tot was being "abused" by virtually all the absent fag's family members. No physical evidence was found - incredible given the extremity of the alleged assaults, including rope bondage and penile and machete(!) rape.

Yet Stephen was hauled back from California, and after a fashion he and his father ended up with 19-to-35-year prison sentences, all on the testimony of a child who could easily have been coached by his parents, possibly abused for real by step-dad (whose own methods for maintaining a "disciplined family" raise suspicions), and whose mom admitted they frequently watched XXX movies in the living room while Junior was "asleep" on her lap.

After four years in Jackson Prison - where Stephen was duly raped - the two Matthews men were released. Oops: A V.D. test that had been the sole nonverbal evidence had been botched, resulting in a false positive. It also emerged that their own attorneys had willfully fumbled the case, having assumed their guilt. After all, Stephen was gay! So the whole family must be perverts, right?

Ten years later, final charges (so far) were dropped. This happy ending is slightly qualified: strapped by lawyers' fees and other debts while her spouse was in prison, Mrs. Matthews had to sell their home. The family business still hasn't recovered from its public taint, Mr. M. "found God" in the worst way while incarcerated, and Stephen's entire young adulthood is, well, gone. Then there's the (unnamed) Junior - now 15, he's heard voicing hate-filled invective just like step-dad, who taught him "how to be a man." He not only believes in his "abused past," he continues to embellish it – mentioning a "kidnapping" by biological-dad that was never even alleged, and logistically couldn't have happened.

Of course proven child abuse should be punished. But as one expert notes during the film, we've gone from being a nation that ignores the problem to one that assumes guilt until innocence is proven – figuring it's worth imprisoning any number of suspects if one actual abuser is ensnared. The Jaundiced Eye demonstrates just how this climate can make A.D. 2000's "justice" look suspiciously like the shoot-first, questions-later Wild West of yore.

'The Jaundiced Eye' screens Fri/25-Thurs/2, 6, 8, and 10 p.m. (also Sat.-Sun. and Wed., 2 and 4 p.m.), Roxie Cinema, 3117 16th St., S.F. (415) 431-3611.

Copyright & copy; 2000 San Francisco Bay Guardian